A note on lateral transshipment under point-process driven demand

We analyze lateral transshipment for items whose demand is driven by an arbitrary point process. We find conditions under which lateral transshipment stochastically lowers the cost of a system of demand centers. Our main structural result is that transshipment works best for slow-moving items, such as spare-parts, when the demands are driven by non-homogeneous or homogeneous Poisson processes. We also obtain general results that apply when demand is driven by an arbitrary point process.