ELECTRONIC INFORMATION NETWORK FOR INVENTORY CONTROL AND TRANSFER

A process for distributing items, especially industrial maintenance repair and operating (MRO) parts and supplies. The process includes as a first step providing a plurality of vendors for selling the item. Next, an information network by which each vendor can communicate to the other vendors a current inventory quantity and a current price of the item each of the vendors has for sale. A last step includes establishing an agreement among the vendors in which a first vendor agrees to sell to a second vendor, upon demand at a future point in time, up to the then current inventory quantity of the item at the then current price communicated over the information network by the first vendor to the second vendor