# Intelligent Procurement Scheduling System for Items Involving Public Procurement
## 2 Materials and Methods  
Publicly traded companies, adhering to government regulations and policies, typically establish dedicated procurement departments. In this study, we focus on the procurement of essential bought out items (BOI) necessary for steam generator systems in a reputable public corporation. The role of the BOI procurement department is pivotal within the realm of supply chain management as it necessitates seamless coordination with various project units, such as design, finance, commercial, project management and project monitoring. This coordination is vital for executing procurement processes through supplier contracts [17; 33; 34]. It is worth noting that any enhancement or deficiency in the procurement process may only become evident at the conclusion of lengthy contracts, which often span months or even years, making immediate system changes unfeasible. Within this study, we specifically consider items like thermal insulation and control components of steam generation systems. The major focus of this paper is on a critical milestone in the procurement process: the journey from purchase request initiation to contract finalization. The purchase request entails technical specifications, required quantities and other pertinent details for soliciting supplier proposals. Upon receiving a purchase request, purchase executives process it, transforming it into an actionable contract with legal validity and subsequently issue it to the supplier. Table 1 classifies these items and provides their average durations from purchase request initiation to contract finalization. The dataset used in this study was sourced from the procurement department of a steam generator manufacturer in India, specifically from tender processes conducted between 2019 and 2021. The datacomprises detailed records of procurement activities, including item requisitions, vendor submissions, evaluation criteria, tender outcomes and timelines for each procurement stage. The application of fuzzy logic for evaluation entails a three-step procedure. Initially, crisp inputs must undergo fuzzification. Subsequently, an inference mechanism applies fuzzy rules for evaluation and, finally, the results are defuzzified to yield crisp output values. To determine the optimal procurement norm for the purchase request to contract finalization milestone, the machine learning technique recursive feature elimination (RFE) was used to identify key inputs, as it provides a clear ranking of features based on their importance, making it straightforward to identify the most significant variables. RFE helps improve model performance by eliminating redundant and irrelevant features, leading to better generalization of unseen data as well [35; 36; 37]. While numerous factors play a role, \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Item** & **Classification** & **2019–2020** & **2020–2021** & **Average Days** \\ \hline Elevator & Control System & 180 & 165 & 172.5 \\ Corrug. cladding & Thermal Insulation & 200 & 132 & 166 \\ Transducers & Control System & 130 & 160 & 145 \\ Plain cladding & Thermal Insulation & 90 & 180 & 135 \\ Inst. Cable & Control System & 156 & 112 & 134 \\ Ceramic fiber & Thermal Insulation & 120 & 100 & 110 \\ Actuators & Control System & 98 & 120 & 109 \\ Castables & Thermal Insulation & 140 & 72 & 106 \\ Teflon hoses & Control System & 120 & 86 & 103 \\ Pourables & Thermal Insulation & 96 & 102 & 99 \\ Switches & Control System & 109 & 75 & 92 \\ Junction boxes & Control System & 97 & 75 & 86 \\ Control boxes & Control System & 56 & 116 & 86 \\ EM valve & Control System & 120 & 46 & 83 \\ Control cables & Control System & 86 & 80 & 83 \\ Rock fiber & Thermal Insulation & 75 & 84 & 79.5 \\ Fittings & Control System & 61 & 89 & 75 \\ Metal Mesh & Thermal Insulation & 80 & 68 & 74 \\ Pneu. tubes & Control System & 51 & 95 & 73 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Purchase request to contract finalization duration in days.