Abstract: The problem of buffer monitoring has a significant impact on successful application of the critical chain project management in many enterprises, and it can improve the performance of project schedule management and ensure the on-time delivery of projects. The current buffer monitoring methods neglect the project structure and activity information. To solve this defect, the activity sensitivity information in the schedule risk analysis method is introduced as a basis for decision making. The calculation of activity sensitivity index and the setting of action threshold are studied. An activity sensitivity index based dynamic monitoring process is triggered and integrated into buffer control when buffer consumption penetrates into the yellow region. Then an activity sensitivity index based dynamic buffer monitoring method is proposed. In detail, a indicator system with considering buffer index and activity cruciality index is established, and the action threshold of each indicator is set during project execution. Finally, a computational experiment is carried out to compare the proposed method and the current methods, the results show that the proposed method do better than the current buffer monitoring method in four performance indicators, such as the total crashing time, the total number of crashing activities, the frequency of completion time exceeding plans and monitoring load, when reasonably setting the action threshold of cruciality index.

Key words: critical chain project management, buffer monitoring, schedule monitoring, activity sensitivity