Orchestrating the effective interaction of independent components
requires that something guarantees each component
is working correctly. The system manager component (SMC)
starts, stops, and monitors each of the other components. It
manages the state transitions of each component in accordance
with the overall DCPS finite state machine model, and brokers
the communication infrastructure between the components.
Finally, it monitors the activity of each component for purposes
of accurately reporting the heartbeat that reflects the
internal integrity of the system.