A decision must be made with respect to which processor watches the clock to trigger a temporal event. The following guidelines can help determine how a temporal event is triggered:

• If all of the response for the event can be delivered using automated technologies, then a processor in the automated partition could watch the clock and stimulate the event.

  Example:Each night, the automated inventory system electronically sends orders to suppliers to order replacements.

• If one or more of the responses must be delivered manually, then it is usually best to have a processor (human) in the manual partition watch the clock and manually stimulate the automated partition to produce the responses.

  Example: The vice-president of sales expects a printed prior month sales summary by the third business day of the new month.

  Note that this is a delegation pattern because this is an automation boundary choice.