After much research on qualitative reasoning, the problem of ambiguities still hampers the practicality of this important AI tool. In this paper, the sources of ambiguities are examined in depth with a systems engineering point of view and possible directions to disambiguation are suggested. This includes some modeling strategies and an architecture of temporal inference for building unambiguous qualitative models of practical complexity. It is argued that knowledge of multiple levels in abstraction hierarchy must be reflected in the modeling to resolve ambiguities by introducing the designers decisions. The inference engine must be able to integrate two different types of temporal knowledge representation to determine the partial ordering of future events. As an independent quantity management system that supports the suggested modeling approach, LIQUIDS(Linear Quantity-Information Deriving System) is described. The inference scheme can be conjoined with ordinary rule-based reasoning systems and hence generalized into many different domains.