Hand -to-mouth buying
Frequent purchases in small quantities to meet only immediate , short term requirements
Also, it is a practice of planning inbound material purchases and flows without the need for significant inventory levels

Hazardous Materials
Materials or substances that have been determined by a government agency to be a risk to health, safety and property and thus need to comply with the prescribed safeguards. The term includes such items as as explosives, flammables, poisons, corrosive, radio active substances. These materials must be packaged, labeled, handled and transported according to strict regulations from several agencies. International shipments must comply with docket HM-181, where the term "dangerous goods" is often used interchangeably with hazardous materials

Hedging
A purchase or sale entered into for the purpose of balancing a sale or purchase already made or under contract, in order to offset the effect of potential market price fluctuations.

Host Country
Any country where an organisation has its world headquarters

Hundred Weight
100 pounds, a unit of weight used in transportation

High Sea Sale
It describes the transfer of Goods from the buyer when the material is on high sea

Holding Cost
Also called Carrying cost, it is the average cost of carrying a unit of an inventory item. It normally includes opportunity cost of holding inventory and other related costs such as overhead and variable costs

Hub
A large retailer or manufacturer having many trading partners

Handling Costs
The cost involved in moving, transferring, preparing, and otherwise handling inventory.

Hawthorne Effect
From a study conducted at the Hawthorne Plant of Western Electric Company in 1927-1932 which found that the act of showing people that you are concerned usually results in better job performance. Studying and monitoring of activities are typically seen as being concerned and results in improved productivity.

Hedge Inventory
A form of inventory buildup to buffer against some event that may not happen. Hedge inventory planning involves speculation related to potential labor strikes, price increases, unsettled governments, and events that could severely impair a company’s strategic initiatives. Risk and consequences are unusually high, and top management approval is often
required.

Heijunka
In the Just-in-Time philosophy, an approach to level production throughout the supply chain to match the planned rate of end product sales.

Honeycombing
1. The practice of removing merchandise in pallet load quantities where the space is not exhausted in an orderly fashion. This results in inefficiencies due to the fact that the received merchandise may not be efficiently stored in the space which is created by the honey-combing.
2. The storing or withdrawal or supplies in a manner that results in vacant space that is not usable for storage of other items. 3. Creation of unoccupied space resulting from withdrawal of unit loads. This is one of the major hidden costs of warehousing.

Hopper cars
Rail cars that permit top loading and bottom unloading of bulk commodities; some hopper cars have permanent tops with hatches to provide protection against the elements.

Horizontal Play/Horizontal Hub
This is a term for a function that cuts across many industries, usually defines a facility or organization that is providing a common service.
1) A large retailer or manufacturer having many trading partners.
2) A reference for a transportation network as in “hub and spoke” which is common in the airline and trucking industry. For example, a hub airport serves as the focal point for the origin and termination of long-distance flights where flights from outlying areas are fed into the hub airport for connecting flights.
3) A common connection point for devices in a network.
4) A Web "hub" is one of the initial names for what is now known as a "portal". It came from the creative idea of producing a website, which would contain many different "portal spots" (small boxes that looked like ads, with links to different yet related content). This content, combined with Internet technology, made this idea a milestone in the development and appearance of websites, primarily due to the ability to display a lot of useful content and store one's preferred information on a secured server. The web term "hub" was replaced with portal.

Hybrid Inventory System
An inventory system combining features of the fixed reorder quantity inventory model and the fixed reorder cycle inventory model. Features of the fixed reorder cycle inventory model and the fixed reorder quantity inventory model can be combined in many different ways. For example, in the order point-periodic review combination system, an order is placed if the inventory level drops below a specified level before the review date; if not, the order quantity is determined at the next review date. Another hybrid inventory system is the optional replenishment model.