Warehousing and order picking

Auslagern leads two lives, and an English reader can meet both on the same business page. In the warehouse it is the plain opposite of einlagern: a pallet wird ausgelagert when it comes down from its location and heads for the loading bay. In the boardroom the same verb means to outsource — a company lagert die Buchhaltung aus and hands it to a service provider, and the noun die Auslagerung is the ordinary German for outsourcing. The two senses share one picture: something taken out of the house and kept somewhere else. Which one is meant is settled by the object. Goods, pallets and cartons are moved; tasks, departments and services are contracted out. So der Versand ist ausgelagert does not describe a parcel leaving a shelf. It says that somebody else now does the shipping.