Founded in 1952 and headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota, Border States is one of the largest electrical distributors in the U.S. The 3,600 employee-owned company supports customers across utility, industrial, construction, and infrastructure markets, including organizations building large-scale data centers and hyperscale facilities.
Success Story
Grenzstaaten
Lagerverwaltung, Lagerpersonalplanung
Border States expands warehouse operations with AI solutions from Blue Yonder
Das Unternehmen
Die geschäftliche Herausforderung
Over several decades, Border States has expanded through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. As new businesses were integrated into the organization, warehouse processes, operating methods, and workflows varied across locations. Maintaining consistency across a growing network became increasingly important. Its existing systems were not designed to provide the level of standardization, scalability, and warehouse optimization needed for the company’s long-term objectives. Border States needed a warehouse management solution capable of supporting operational consistency, improving execution, and creating a foundation for future innovation.
Die Lösung
Border States selected Blue Yonder Warehouse Management (WMS) and Blue Yonder Warehouse Labor Management (WLM) to modernize its warehouse operations and support enterprise-wide performance improvements. Built on the Blue Yonder Platform, the solutions provide a streamlined user experience, configurable workflows, system-directed work and advanced warehouse orchestration capabilities. Early success from the initial deployment has led to expansion plans across additional large branch locations. Future phases include advanced slotting, AI-enabled orchestration and enhanced operational intelligence designed to further improve warehouse efficiency and responsiveness.
“With Blue Yonder, we really see that streamlined UI, but at the same time, it’s a very complete solution and can really solve for all our needs. It makes for a wonderful experience for all our users.”
–Andres Nunez, Director of Warehousing and Transportation, Border States
Creating a scalable foundation for continued growth
As Border States’ distribution operations expanded, its leadership recognized the value of establishing a common operational framework that could scale across the business. Consistent warehouse execution would help improve productivity, simplify onboarding, and create a stronger foundation for future expansion.
To support these goals, Border States evaluated warehouse management platforms capable of handling the complexity of a large electrical distribution environment. Border States selected Blue Yonder WMS to align with the company’s objective of creating a modern, scalable warehouse platform that could support employee owners while enabling operational consistency across locations.
Empowering employees through system-directed work
A key objective for Border States was improving the daily experience of warehouse employees. In many warehouse environments, workers spent valuable time determining task priorities and making operational decisions that could vary from person to person.
Blue Yonder Warehouse Management and Warehouse Labor Management helped address this challenge through system-directed work generated by the solution. Instead of relying on varying, manual decision-making on what tasks need to be accomplished, employees receive guidance directly from the solution, enabling faster execution for the company’s teams.
“We’ve put the WLM layer on top of our WMS, and the mix is really powerful because now it's not about the stopwatch functionality. The system-directed work really enables our users to spend less time making decisions and more time executing the work because they trust the solution,” says Nunez.
Addressing the unique requirements of electrical distribution
Border States found Blue Yonder partner Open Sky Group to be a strong implementation collaborator because of its deep warehouse management expertise, proven experience with electrical distributor implementations, and specialized understanding of wire cutting and related semi-assembly processes.
Beyond standard warehouse workflows such as receiving, put-away, picking, packing, and shipping, Open Sky Group brought knowledge of more complex operational requirements involving setup, execution, allocation, and quasi-manufacturing activities. Its existing WMS extensions for wire cutting, developed through work with large organizations in the wire and manufacturing space, gave Border States confidence that the partner understood the company’s industry-specific needs. Border States also valued Open Sky Group’s structured implementation methodology, particularly its thorough discovery process with warehouse teams, clear planning around required decisions, and disciplined progression through construction, execution, and deployment.
Delivering momentum through successful implementation
The implementation efforts of Blue Yonder have progressed on time and on budget. System integration testing has produced strong results and provided confidence to the company as the program has advanced toward user acceptance testing and production deployment.
The success of the initial implementation has created momentum for additional expansion. What began as a single deployment is now serving as the foundation for broader adoption across the company.
Border States is already implementing Blue Yonder WMS in three of its largest branches, extending the benefits of standardized warehouse processes, system-directed execution and operational visibility to additional facilities.
Advancing growth with an intelligent digital foundation
As planning, transportation and warehousing become increasingly connected, advanced technologies can provide broader visibility across the business and support faster, more informed decision-making. Border States views AI and advanced capabilities powered by AI and machine learning as important enablers for the future of supply chain operations.
“We’ve invested in Blue Yonder’s Cognitive Solutions for Warehouse Management for a few different reasons. We love the slotting capability integrated within our warehouse operations, and we can be very adaptive to market fluctuations and product fluctuations. It really helps us to stay efficient. And the orchestration layer is huge for us. It’s fueled by AI agents in natural language. The operator or the supervisor can ask questions in natural language and get responses from the solution. And the built-in alerts can anticipate actions, knowing that a worker may be potentially missing materials and is going to be late for a customer order. Once we build enough trust in the solution, we'll be looking to just let it make the decisions for us and share the accountability of that decision-making,” says Nunez.
With Blue Yonder Platform serving as the foundation, Border States will gain access to ongoing innovation while maintaining focus on adoption, operational excellence, and continuous improvement. Expansion across its additional branches, advanced warehouse capabilities, and AI-powered orchestration are all part of the company’s roadmap. By establishing a scalable warehouse management platform today, Border States is creating the operational foundation needed to support continued growth, enhance employee productivity, and deliver consistent execution across its distribution network for years to come.
