When I look back at 35 years of textbook writing, I sometimes think that my biggest contribution to OM pedagogy was writing the early versions of AB:POM. These were the PC programs that allow students to solve about 95% of the homework problems in the text. I remember coding them in BASIC, in 1980 on my Apple 2e. Thank goodness for Professor Howard Weiss at Temple U., who had the skill to bring about the upgrade to POM for Windows (and then to create Excel OM) a decade or so later.
I usually spend a half hour demonstrating how to use these programs, free to students, the first week of class. They pick up on the inputs easily and are very happy to avoid doing regressions, SPC, and inventory modeling by hand. I know some profs don’t use software in their course, but my view has always been to stress output interpretation, rather than hand calculations.
Students have called me years later to tell me they still find the software useful in their jobs.
Which one to use, POM or Excel OM? I used to show both and let the students pick their favorite. But later I decided to focus on Excel OM, the Excel add-in. Its open coding shows the formula and looks like the spreadsheets they are used to. Any homework problems with an X next to it can be solved in Excel OM, and any with a P by POM (which is written in C++).