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The purpose of this research is to provide a theoretical and practical theory and application that provides understanding and means to manage complex infrastructures.

In this research, complexity, nonlinear, noncontinuous effects and aleatoric and data unknowns are bypassed by directly addressing systems' responses. Graph theory, statistics and digital signal processing (DSP) tools are applied within a theoretical framework of the theory of faults (ToF). Motivational complex infrastructure systems (CISs) are difficult to model. Data are often missing or erroneous, changes are not well documented and processes are not well understood. On top of it, under complexity, stalwart analytical tools have limited predictive power. The aleatoric risk, such as rain and risk cascading from interconnected infrastructures, is unpredictable. Mitigation, response and recovery efforts are adversely affected.

The theory and application are presented and demonstrated by a step-by-step development of an application to a municipal drainage system. A database of faults is analyzed to produce system statistics, spatio-temporal morphology, behavior and traits. The gained understanding is compared to the physical system's design and to its modus operandi. Implications for design and maintenance are inferred; DSP tools to manage the system in real time are developed.

Sociological systems are interest driven. Some events are intentionally created and directed to the benefit and detriment of the opposing parties in a project. Those events may be explained and possibly predicted by understanding power plays, not power functions. For those events, sociological game theories provide better explanatory value than mathematical gain theories.

The theory provides a thematic network for modeling and resolving aleatoric uncertainty in engineering and sociological systems. The framework may be elaborated to fields such as energy, healthcare and critical infrastructure.

ToF provides a framework for the modeling and prediction of faults generated by inherent aleatoric uncertainties in social and technological systems. Therefore, the framework and theory lay the basis for automated monitoring and control of aleatoric uncertainties such as mechanical failures and human errors and the development of mitigation systems.

The contribution of this research is in the provision of an explicatory theory and a management paradigm for complex systems. This theory is applicable to a wide variety of fields from facilities and construction project management to maintenance and from academic studies to commercial use.

In operations and supply chain management, time is largely one-dimensional – less is better – with much effort devoted to compressing, efficiently using, and competitively exploiting clock-time. However, by drawing on other literatures, the purpose of this paper is to understand implications for the field of operations management if we also emphasize how humans and organizations experience time, termed process-time, which is chronicled by events and stages of change.

After a brief review, the limitations of the recurrent time-oriented themes in operations management and the resulting short-termism are summarized. Next, sustainability is offered as an important starting point to explore the concept of temporality, including both clock- and process-time, as well as the implications of temporal orientation and temporal conflict in supply chains.

A framework that includes both management and stakeholder behavior is offered to illustrate how multiple temporal perspectives might be leveraged as a basis for an expanded and enriched understanding of more sustainable competitiveness in operations.

Research by others emphasizes the importance of stakeholders to competitiveness. By recognizing that different stakeholder groups have varying temporal orientations and temporality, managers can establish objectives and systems that better reflect time-based diversity and diffuse temporal conflict.

This paper summarizes how time has been incorporated in operations management, as well as the challenges of short-termism. Sustainability forms the basis for exploring multiple perspectives of time and three key constructs: temporal orientation, temporality, and temporal conflict. A framework is proposed to better incorporate temporal perspectives as a basis for competitiveness in operations and supply chain management.