System and method for adjusting the depth of parallelization for recipe program execution

A computer program product for recipe instruction provisioning in relation to registered cooking apparatuses in a cooking environment of a cooking user for preparing a food product, each registered cooking apparatus being registered in a cooking apparatus registry as having a particular device type, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer readable instructions that, when loaded into a memory of a computing device and executed by at least one processor of the computing device, cause the computing device to:

• receive, at a processor and from a recipe database, a recipe program file with recipe instructions readable by the processor for preparing the food product, wherein the recipe instructions are configured to be executed by one or more cooking apparatuses in that the recipe instructions include annotations specifying one or more device types suitable to execute the recipe instructions in that the annotations include metadata specifying the one or more device types that are appropriate to execute a corresponding recipe instruction of the recipe instructions;
• receive a parallelization constraint associated with the cooking user, the parallelization constraint configured to influence a degree of parallelization of the food preparation with regard to parallel use of the registered cooking apparatuses;
• determine one or more subsets of the registered cooking apparatuses by identifying execution options for the recipe instructions on said one or more subsets of the registered cooking apparatuses resulting in a recipe execution in compliance with the parallelization constraint, wherein each identified execution option of the execution options corresponds to a recipe instruction sequence that can be executed by one or more of the registered cooking apparatuses identified by respective ones of the annotations, wherein the annotations are used as a filter criterion to eliminate execution options for the recipe program that use device types not included in the registered cooking apparatuses or in the cooking environment;
• select an execution option of the execution options providing a best match with the received parallelization constraint in accordance with predefined matching rules, wherein the best match is determined by comparing the received parallelization constraint with respective ones of the annotations of recipe instructions of each execution option to identify an equality between the received parallelization constraint and the execution option, or, in case no equality is identified, by selecting respective annotations of recipe instructions of the execution option as being closest to the received parallelization constraint in compliance with the predefined matching rules, wherein the selected execution option enables at least one of (i) reduced overall preparation time or (ii) fewer manual intervention steps compared to sequential execution on a single apparatus;
• and
• transmitting, by a communications link, recipe deployment instructions to the one or more subsets of the registered cooking apparatuses of the selected execution option in accordance with corresponding annotations for preparing the food product, the recipe deployment instructions conforming to the recipe instruction sequence, and thereby causing the registered cooking apparatuses of the selected subsets to execute the partitioned recipe instructions in parallel.

A computer system for recipe instruction provisioning in relation to registered cooking apparatuses in a cooking environment of a cooking user for preparing a food product, each registered cooking apparatus being registered in a cooking apparatus registry as having a particular device type, the system comprising at least one memory storing instructions and at least one processor configured to load and execute the instruction to thereby:

• receive, at the processor and from a recipe database, a recipe program file with recipe instructions readable by the processor for preparing the food product, wherein the recipe instructions are configured to be executed by one or more cooking apparatuses in that the recipe instructions include annotations specifying one or more device types suitable to execute the recipe instructions in that the annotations include metadata specifying the one or more device types that are appropriate to execute a corresponding recipe instruction of the recipe instructions;
• receive a parallelization constraint associated with the cooking user, the parallelization constraint configured to influence a degree of parallelization of the food preparation with regard to parallel use of the registered cooking apparatuses;
• determine one or more subsets of the registered cooking apparatuses by identifying execution options for the recipe instructions on said one or more subsets resulting in a recipe execution in compliance with the parallelization constraint, wherein each identified execution option of the execution options corresponds to a recipe instruction sequence that can be executed by one or more of the registered cooking apparatuses identified by respective ones of the annotations, wherein the annotations are used as a filter criterion to eliminate execution options for the recipe program that use device types not included in the registered cooking apparatuses or in the cooking environment,
• select an execution option of the execution options providing a best match with the received parallelization constraint in accordance with predefined matching rules, wherein the best match is determined by comparing the received parallelization constraint with respective ones of the annotations of recipe instructions of each execution option to identify an equality between the received parallelization constraint and the execution option, or, in case no equality is identified, by selecting respective annotations of recipe instructions of the execution option as being closest to the received parallelization constraint in compliance with the predefined matching rules, wherein the selected execution option enables at least one of (i) reduced overall preparation time or (ii) fewer manual intervention steps compared to sequential execution on a single apparatus;
• and
• transmit, by a communications link, recipe deployment instructions to the one or more subsets of the registered cooking apparatuses of the selected execution option in accordance with corresponding annotations for preparing the food product, the recipe deployment instructions conforming to the recipe instruction sequence, and thereby causing the registered cooking apparatuses of the selected subsets to execute the partitioned recipe instructions in parallel.