Online Food Order Assignment System

Late May, 2026

Late May, 2026

Restaurant Kitchen Welcome to the Kitchen Rush! You're managing a busy restaurant kitchen during dinner service. The Problem Orders come in with dishes that need to be prepared at different stations: * PREP: Chopping, mixing * GRILL: Cooking meats * STOVE: Sauces, pasta * PLATE: Final assembly Each dish follows a recipe - a specific sequence of stations. For example: * Burger: PREP (4 min) → GRILL (8 min) → PLATE (2 min) * Pasta: PREP (3 min) → STOVE (10 min) → PLATE (2 min) * Salad: PREP (4 min) → PLATE (1 min) Constraints * Each chef can only work on one dish at a time * Each station can only have one chef working at it at a time * There is only one of each type of station (one GRILL station, one PREP station, etc.) * A dish must complete its current station step before moving to the next * You only see orders after they arrive and cannot see future orders Scoring * On time: Full points * 1-5 min late: Half points * More than 5 min late: Zero points Your Task P1: Warmup Run the P1 tests. There is a bug in the codebase - find it and fix it! P2: Basic Expediter An expediter coordinates the kitchen, deciding which chef works on which dish. Your task is to implement MyExpediter in my_expediter.py. Your goal is a basic, working solution that can process orders with multiple chefs. Don't worry about optimization yet - just get orders completed! P3: Chef Specialization Handle chefs with different speed profiles: * Alex: Fast at PREP (1.5x), slow at GRILL (0.7x) * Blair: Fast at GRILL (1.4x) and STOVE (1.2x), slow at PREP (0.8x) * Casey: Generalist (1.0x) * Dana: Fast at STOVE (1.3x) and PREP (1.2x), slow at PLATE (0.9x) P4: Rush Hour Run the P4 test to simulate a full week of dinner service with lots of orders arriving at different times. Focus on optimizing your expediter for the weeknight scenario first — maximize your average score across the 7 days! Once you're happy with your weeknight performance, the test also shows bonus scores for three other scenarios (happy_hour, holiday_eve, brunch) that have different order patterns. You can investigate a specific scenario in detail by changing the SCENARIO variable in the main file. P5(a): Chef Exhaustion Chefs get exhausted if they're assigned dishes continuously. After X continuous assignments, their efficiency is halved, after Y continuous assignments, they need to take rest P5(b): Station Breakdown ??? Tips * Use kitchen.get_free_chefs() to find available chefs * Use kitchen.get_all_incomplete_dishes() to find dishes needing work * Use kitchen.is_station_free(station) to check station availability Good luck!

Mid May, 2026