Why Factories Crush Perfectly Good Components (And How to Stop)

What happens to the billions of dollars in perfectly good electronic components that get crushed, buried, or dumped every year? In this episode of the CTRL+Listen Podcast, host James Sweetlove sits down with Kenny McGee, CEO and founder of Component Sense, to unpack the hidden world of excess and obsolete electronics inventory — and why scrapping working parts is one of the most expensive mistakes a manufacturer can make. From the pile of neglected stock that sparked the company to the franchise rules that block redistribution, Kenny explains how surplus components quietly drain profit from the electronics supply chain.

Kenny traces his journey from a 1985 apprentice at Ferranti to building a global business focused on reducing waste, breaking down how the circular economy turns dead stock back into cash. He shares what he witnessed firsthand at Agbogbloshie in Ghana — the world's largest e-waste site — walks through the consignment, InPlant, and outright purchase models that help billion-dollar factories recover money tied up in slow-moving inventory, and digs into the Corning case study. He also reveals how AI and tools like Claude are transforming the way his team builds custom solutions. Watch to learn how to stop crushing perfectly good components and start getting your money back.

Don't Miss Out: Subscribe to our channel for more electronics, supply chain, and industry content.

Listen to the Episode

Watch the Episode

Resources from this Episode

• Get in touch with Kenny
• Component Sense Website
• Contact Component Sense
• Component Sense LinkedIn
• Carolina Rapezzi's Website
• Kenny's Ghana Vlog

Transcript

Intro:

It makes no sense to scrap or bury or crush perfectly good components. You know, why would you do that? We make it so easy. We take all the labor, all the hassle out of it for you. Just give us access to the stock in whatever fashion you're comfortable and we'll make sure it gets to a good home and you get your money back. 

James Sweetlove (JS): Hi everyone, welcome to the CTRL+Listen Podcast brought to you by Octopart. Uh today a very special guest for you. This is Kenny McGee, CEO of Component Sense. Thank you so much for joining us Kenny. Great to have you. 

Kenny McGee (KMG): Hi James, thank you. It's great to be here. 

JS: Uh so did you want to start by telling us about your story then your background? 

KMG: Yeah, sure. So um I started out in electronics in 1985. So, I was a young 16-year-old apprentice with a company called Ferranti, which was a large electronics manufacturer for military and defense. So, we were building navigation systems um predominantly and radar systems. So, we weren't in the sort of hard end of military manufacturing, but a lot of electronics, very sophisticated stuff. Long lead times in the parts, small volume but um I did actually run the first volume product through in that company. So as an engineer once I was qualified that was my first role was to simplify the process so that we could have less skilled staff building the product because it was infinitely higher volume than we were used to. It was still only, I think, 500 units a year, which to a proper volume manufacturer is still tiny, but we were used to making one unit every year and a half, you know, when you're building a great big piece of kit for a ship, you know, producing many of them. But yeah, this this was infinitely higher volume and we had to simplify the process. So, I was all about operational efficiency and simplification, uh, both in design and in the process itself. That's where I started out. 

JS: Fantastic. Uh and then we Component Sense uh before you get into the background of the company, how did you come to be uh involved with Component Sense? 

KMG: Yes. So Component Sense I'm the founder. I created it in 2001. Prior to that I was working with Arrow Electronics. So Arrow is one of the biggest franchise distributors in the world and I had to look after Scotland basically. So all the Scottish customers of Arrow were in my remitt and I was looking after them. M  job was was sales. There was a technical aspect to it. I was helping design in components so that they would continually be an arrow customer. So that was a focus for us. My or the Scottish customer base had largely moved. The volume producers had already started to migrate to Europe and particularly Eastern Europe. So, you know, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary. So the big volume users in the UK were already migrating by that point. Um, so my clients tended to be a little bit smaller. Again, a lot of them were military uh or defense contractors, people like Raytheon, Honeywell, you know, people like that. So, yeah, still world famous companies, but it was interesting. It was an interesting role. Well, I did it for about 2 years and during that time I was visiting factories and seeing stock piled up in the corner, disregarded. You could tell, you know, you know, in a production facility, it's very orderly. It's very organized. Everything's exactly where it should be. But I was seeing what's what I knew was valuable stock kind of just shoved in the corner. And I started to ask questions about it. It wasn't really my job. But I was just trying to understand what was going on there. Just really struck me. It looked odd. Um, so I was told in this particular company in Perth in Scotland, not Perth, Australia, Perth, Scotland. That well it's just excess, you know, it's just excess. Not really worried about it. And I could just tell it was worth money. You know, components come in beautiful foil packs, you know, to keep the moisture and the air out so they don't oxidize. And, you know, when you see it in a silver pack, that suggests there's value in it. It's almost to my eye it's like gold bars, you know, if it was in a solid silver pack, it looks like gold bars to me. Um, so I knew there was value in it. And I asked a few questions around it. So it was a significant amount of stock. I think they had 3.2 million pounds, so about $5 million at that time in excess, which was, as I say, pushed aside. So to them it was junk. Um, but it was all brand new, still in its original packaging, and it was all traceable back to the manufacturer. So, I identified the problem. They were keen to sell it. I went back to my guys at Arrow, and spoke to my CEO and asked him if we could help them with this problem, maybe take it off them, buy it from them. You know, we could easily have redistributed it. We knew all the users, you know, literally our system was full of other users of those same components. So, seemed like a no-brainer to me. I think now looking back, I was naive to the franchise rules. So, when you take a franchise on from Analog Devices or Xilinx or any of these guys, you're abiding by their rules and they wouldn't want you necessarily redistributing components. So I think now as a much older, much more experienced person, I can see that they probably weren't allowed to recycle or redistribute that stock. By the time it just frustrated me that the answer was just an outright no, not interested. Um I felt it was a bit poor on customer service at the time and I really wanted to help my client ultimately. So it was all taken over my head. This was sort of 2000 probably late 2000. There was a big boom in the industry back then similar to the one we saw 21/22. So 99 2000 was a big electronics boom and it collapsed January 2001. Arrow was making massive cuts and they were letting people go left, right and center. So I saw that as a good time to step out and go on my own. 

JS: And then uh obviously you founded the company that we are discussing today. 

KMG: Yeah. Yeah. 

JS: Can you tell us a little bit about the company, what his primary goals are and just that that story of it becoming founded? 

KMG: Yeah, so I mean it literally did spawn from that pile of stock in the corner. Um you know, they were my first client. I suggested I could help find homes for that stock. Uh proved infinitely harder than I expected. I didn't have the database that Arrow had that told me who uses those components. So, um, I was doing it in a very very old-fashioned and basic way. I was literally cold calling similar companies that may use those parts, in a very, yeah, rough and ready cold calling complete strangers to say, "Hey, do you use this part?" And, you know, it wasn't particularly successful. Uh, so I went two years without a sale. By this time, I was quite heavily in debt. Um, I was determined to make it work and find a way to make it work. I started to realize there was a network of brokers in the world which again in my naivity I didn't know that there was such a thing. So I was able to connect up with other brokers and they became my outlet for the stock. So I was able to advertise the stock, they would buy it and they would sell it into other OEMs. So it gave me global reach whilst still being a very tiny business at the time. just myself for the first few years. Um, and then gradually grew the business and then acquired more stock, more clients to help. And that's really the foundation of it. And you know, we're very focused on reducing waste. That that was my sort of shock at this was millions of dollars just sitting in a corner, neglected. It just seemed so wasteful. Um, I wanted to try and find a new home for that stock. And that's really still what we do. We we're very narrowly focused. That is all we do is move excess stock, find a new home for it. We can typically get the big manufacturers all their money back. Uh so I quickly learned that companies don't like to sell for a loss, particularly when it's still on the books at full value. So we kind of migrated from smallish maybe hundred million turnover companies to billion-dollar companies because we realized that billion-dollar companies have phenomenal buying power and they can buy a chip that you know a local company here might be paying five bucks for, they're paying $1 for. So big big differential in price. So I can give that company all their money back. I can maybe even give them a profit and I can sell it downstream to that smaller company for less than they're currently paying. So everybody wins. So that was the realization I came to in the long run that it's better to buy from the big guys and the big guys have much stricter quality procedures too. So typically the stocks bought direct from the chip maker. It gives me real reassurance if I've got that traceability and particularly in light of counterfeits that started to show up in what 2005/6 six. 

JS: Okay. 

KMG: If I have traceability that's better than any inspection. 

JS: Makes sense. Uh so for I guess as an afterthought for a lot of people the world of excess and obsolete electronics do you want to just uh maybe explain to people a little bit about what's involved in that space and how much of a I guess uh best way to put it is how much lost opportunity there is in that space? 

KMG: Yeah. I mean it's a byproduct of manufacturing. You're always going to have excess. You're always going to have obsolete. So there's different definitions of excess and obsolete. Obsolete in particular engineers call it obsolete when the chip maker no longer makes it but supply chain typically call it obsolete when they no longer need it. So there is slight differences there. So in this world I live in obviously it's dead for that company but it's probably quite active for somebody else. So whilst they have no further use for it and a phone's a great example. Phones change every year and there's components in that new phone that migrate from the previous one but there's other components that are no longer needed. They're not high tech enough for this new model. So they become excess or obsolete and they just get dumped in the corner. There's nothing wrong with those chips. They're brand new, still in original packaging, traceable. Um and there is hundreds and thousands of other companies that are still using them. So for them it's not obsolete. So um the terminology does get confusing unfortunately. 

JS: Sure. Definitely. 

KMG: It's all buckets if you like. We try and divide it into buckets. If it's dead for you, let's try and move it quickly. Don't be too greedy. Let's get it moved quite quickly. If it's slow moving for you, which is one of the excess definitions is you've got 10,000 pieces, but you only need a thousand this year. Okay, on that pace of usage, it's going to be 10 years before you get rid of that stock. So maybe get rid of some of it now, reduce the burden, put the money back in the bank, and then if you need more than five years time, you can buy more in five years time as long as it's not engineering obviously as in no longer manufactured. So Right. 

JS: Right end of life. 

KMG: Yeah. 

JS: So there's a term that I've heard a lot around this which is the circular economy. Uh and obviously that relates to e-waste. Do you want to explain a little bit about the circular economy and that concept? 

KMG: Yeah, I mean that wasn't really talked about much when I started the business 2001. I mean the concept of what I was trying to do was exactly circular. So it's taking from one person and getting it to another that could use it so that it you know we've got a little um logo or chip logo is like a an IC and then we've got a character called Chip who is effectively an IC on legs. And we talk about him as uh as a true device, you know, a device and the goal is to make sure he fulfills his potential. So if we think of that device, any device that's sitting in the corner, it's  not being used for its full potential. And we really want it to have a life, I guess. Um, and I think there's we've even got a little cartoon about it, you know, about Chip being a bit depressed because he's dumped in the corner and, you know, it's a fun representation of the reality of waste. Uh, so as the circular economy developed and people started to talk about it, it automatically fitted with what we were already doing. So um yeah, if a chip was made, the resources into going into that chip are enormous in terms of power, in terms of minerals and metals, you know, things pulled out of the ground. The damage done to the world in order to collect those elements to then form them into a chip. If that chip isn't used and it ends up back in landfill or crushed or maybe even fueling the counterfeit economy, that's really bad for everyone. Whereas, if it goes into a product and has a 10-year lifespan, that's far better. 

JS: When I was talking uh to Ash, she mentioned that you visited Ghana in 2024. That you had a really great example of this. Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit? 

KMG: Yeah. So, Ghana came to me about 2007. I heard about our e-waste from the UK ending up in Ghana. So there was a documentary I saw on TV and the e-waste from here. We take it to our local tip, dump, amenity site, whatever you want to call it, for recycling. So, we think that item's getting recycled. But the truth of this documentary was they realized and found that it was being shipped abroad. Now, we're not allowed to do that. It's been illegal since the year 2000, but it was still happening. It was happening on scale. There's been loads of documentaries about it since. It's definitely happening in Australia. I saw a documentary specifically targeting Australia on that one. Um, and this stock is being sold or moved into countries like Ghana. That's happening a lot in India. It's happening a lot in China. Um sold as working goods, right? Some of which may work, some won't. Fair proportion doesn't in my experience. So I wanted to learn for myself. So many years had passed 2007 to 24. It still was bothering me and I want to do something about it. But rather than just go off a documentary, I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to understand it better. So, I went out with a wonderful photojournalist called Carolina Rapezzi and uh she'd been out a couple times before. She'd been taking photographs and when I had one of my marketing people do some research on it and was writing a blog, I asked to go find some photos. You know, we need some photos to go with this article. And she found Carolina's photos, asked for permission to use them. Carolina and I was more than happy as long as we were fighting the same cause. And when I saw the photos, they were really, really amazing and really got over the feeling and the human cost of this e-waste. Um, so from that I did I said, "Look, let's get Carolina up here. I want to interview her." And that that was the very first video I've ever done. So, you know, we're going to be starting a podcast soon, but that was the first video I'd done. and we just did it off the cuff because I needed to ask her questions about it. We literally just set up a couple of iPhones and filmed the thing. And it was just it was amazing to learn firsthand from her experience what it was like out there and what was happening with our e-waste. So by the time we got to the end of it, I actually watched it back last night with my mother-in-law because she's never seen it before. And it was it was good timing coming on here today with that being fresh in my head. But it really is it's emotional going out there and seeing what's going on. And I wanted to follow the supply chain all the way from the from the ports where these containers are arriving full of waste. They then tend to go to a sort of retail area where they're selling secondhand goods. They'll buy up, you know, if there's a pile of TVs in that container, they somebody will buy up the whole batch. They'll plug them all in, see which ones are working. They might get we were seeing about 20% that worked. Okay. So roughly 20% were working. The rest would then get moved on to another town. There was another town that tended to be the repair shop. Interesting. And they would try and fix what they could and they would maybe get, you know, another 20% or so fixed. Some of the ones that they couldn't fix would become spare parts for repair. It was beautiful setup actually, you know, all very informal, but it was actually like a perfect production line. You know, so the repairers would hold on to circuit boards from different products in the hope they could one day sell that circuit board to a repairer. And then finally the rest became e-waste. Somebody would show up in a motorbike with a trailer on the back and drag this waste down to Agbogbloshie, which is the that's the area that's known as the world's largest e-waste site. So that's where the products end up and that's the bit that everybody sees in the documentaries, but I would really want you to understand that entire supply chain and even from there the circuit boards now they used to just get burnt as well. So the they tend to burn things to get to the metals. It's the fastest way to get to the value if you like at that stage. So they want to burn it and get to the copper and the aluminium and things like that. So horrible process, really horrible process for the environment and particularly for their own health. 

JS: Imagine inhaling that's not great.

I spent two weeks in that area and I met with the guys that were doing the job and some people had tried to support them with cleaner ways of stripping cable for example. But it's not as fast and when you're trying to feed your family on $2.50 a day. Fast unfortunately gets the priority over clean. Their electricity supply is not particularly stable either. So they had mechanical issues with the equipment too. So it just it was unbelievable to see it firsthand to spend time with the people and realize for me just the human side of it. They're just trying to survive. They're just trying to feed their families the same as we are. It's a pretty desperate situation. and I would love to be able to help properly. We've done little bits of support so far. My goal long term is to get this the people that supply us our components which are massive manufacturers to support in a small way. You know, it's like I describe, you know, my particular phone's an Apple. It's an absolute fortune when I replace it. It cost me an extra five bucks or 10 bucks, it would not matter at all. I wouldn't even notice if that five or 10 bucks went to a place like this in Ghana, it could do a lot of good multiplied by the volume. So, you know, a fairly small donation if you like from the equipment users could really properly clean up um and help fund the economy as well. Well, I mean, the economy is, you know, it's desperate enough that people are traveling seven hours to burn cable. You know, with a bit of help, they could clean that whole thing up and they could become the recycling center of the world. 

JS: Right. Right. Some facilities were constructed, proper equipment and I mean, they're willing to do the work. So, I just, you know, definitely I agree. 

KMG: Yeah. They're hardworking, lovely people. I mean, they were so welcoming. They were they were just wonderful. It was I felt perfectly safe. You know, I stood out like a sore thumb, you know, this shiny head, white shiny head and amongst the locals. You could spot me from probably a mile away, but yeah, it was great. It was really interesting and I desperately want to do more for them. 

JS: Thank you for the story because it gives an insight to you always see the big picture, but you never hear the on the ground stuff. So I think uh it's very insightful to actually see what it's like and what that process is like it goes somewhere. The matter doesn't disappear and people just kind of it's out of sight, out of mind. I think for a lot of people.

KMG: The technology exists to recycle properly. It just it's expensive. You know somebody has to fund that and get that started. You know the people there are hardworking. You know there was some amazing entrepreneurs in there. You know, I saw all kinds of things that repairers in particular, you know, taking something that we would throw away because it's not working. They would take the time and they would learn how to fix it. And they were soldering in tiny little devices, you know, tiny little components into mobile phones, into laptops, and repairing them like the old days, you know, we've not repaired things for decades now. Yeah. You chuck away the entire circuit board and plug in a new one at best. Nowadays, it's quite often just chuck away the whole thing and it's so wasteful. So, it's I was really quite reassured to see things getting a longer life, you know. 

JS: Yeah. It's going to be crucial as well going forward with resource scarcity as we progress as you know as a planet more consumption more scarcity we're going to have to get better at the sort of reuse recycle repair side of things or it's just not going to be sustainable. 

KMG: Yeah. I've got a slide in my slide deck when I'm selling when I'm out talking to potential clients that's the periodic table. So, if you remember that from your old science lab, three quarters of those elements are in the average mobile phone. And then a lot of those are rare or endangered and going to be impossible to find maybe a hundred years from now. They're getting harder and harder to find. A lot of the conflicts around the world right now are all around minerals. You know, it's a big mess. So the more we can do to reduce usage, the better. 

JS: For sure. I want to pivot for a second and talk about uh something I saw on your website. So you listed that you had InPlant consignment or outright purchase options. I wanted to know what the difference was between those three. 

KMG: Okay. So yeah, when I first started, I was a one-man business. I had zero cash. So I created 

a model called Consignment. So I could physically take the goods from my supplier, so manufacturing company nearby. I could literally go with a van, collect the goods, put them in my warehouse and sell them on their behalf. So that's where the Consignment began. And it was through necessity. I didn't have the capital to lay out and buy stock. Worked for some, some clients liked that, others didn't. And I just had to work with the ones that were comfortable with that. It was created through necessity because I didn't have the capital to physically buy stock and I certainly didn't have the technology at that time to do something as sophisticated as InPlant. So InPlant came much later. So I started out consigning stock and managing it for people. Customers often asked for cash and I just didn't have the money to offer that at the early stages. So as capital built up in the business I would offer both cash or consignment and it depended on the company's preference very highly customer focused so I want to give options typically we then started to get into bigger factories once we started to get into the billion dollar factories and wandering around there we could see that 1% roughly of a company's revenue was tied up in in what we called earlier obsolete stock. So stuff they will never use again. So 1% of revenue on a billion dollars is still a chunky amount of stock. But we realized there was much more stock in the factory that was slow moving or excess. And that equates to typically 10% of revenue. So 10% of billion dollars is now a very large sum of money that is tied up in stock that isn't currently needed and certainly not in the near future. So we typically look out maybe a year and identify stock that isn't going to be consumed within a year. We would deem that excess and we would actively market that stock and try and move it on because forecasts change, you know. So if you're forecasting and I've got five years worth of this stock, it's a pretty uncomfortable position for a manufacturing company to be in. Because if the forecast does drop, you're stuck with that stuff. That's your future obsolete. So that's what we're trying to prevent. We started to realize that actually the bigger issue was this slow moving excess stock. So the obsolete we can deal with. We can buy it cash. We can consign it. Uh but if you're a big enough client to justify our InPlant product which we created ourselves about 2010 in conjunction with one of the biggest EMSs in the world. Uh we worked with them very closely and we had then were able to manage all of the stock in their plant. Hence, hence the name. So, physically on site, we don't move it. We don't want to incur uh extra cost physically moving it and we don't really want the environmental impact of moving it from one country to another unnecessarily. So, we can leave it on site. If their forecast increases, they can use it and if their forecast decreases, we can sell it. And it's live. It's working on live data straight from their MRP system. So whether it's SAP or some other MRP system, we know what's for sale on a given day, we can sell it and then move it from there only as it's sold. So highly efficient. We can work on really low margins. The client in those situations is usually getting all their money back, if not more. So it's a pretty cool product, actually. 

JS: That's fantastic. Yeah, very cool. So I saw you had some case studies as well. I know there was one that was for Corning Inc. Do you want to get into a little bit of the that case and just give an example of sort of how this whole thing works in a real scenario? 

KMG: Yeah, sure. So Corning was an interesting one. They contacted us. Their stock was sitting in an EMS. They were gradually pulling out of working with that EMS. They were transferring some business to another company in a different country. And they asked us to come in and look at stock that was dead. So for them dead, obsolete. It was quite a large quantity. It was you know multi-million dollars. We went in to have a look and we quickly identified that we could resell it. We had to uplift it because an EMS isn't really designed for selling single items, small batches. So you know, if we try and get an EMS to do that, they usually struggle. They're used to shipping pallet loads of finished goods. So their entire process is designed for that. We want to be able to ship small packages of, you know, 10,000 to 100,000 of a component. Could still be a tiny package in many cases. So it's a bit different. Some EMSs allow us to go InPlant and we set all of that up for them. This particular EMS we weren't engaged with. So the decision was made to take it off site. So we literally decided that while we were there, you know, again, very customer focused, just trying to find a solution. So sat around the boardroom table inside the EMS with the client, we quickly decided this, you know, getting them to pick and pack and ship this product for us, one item at a time, wasn't going to work. So we drove around the area, Guadalajara, and we found a third party logistics company that we felt could support us and we pretty much switched it on within a week or two. We moved all the stock to there and managed it from there. And we're still working with those guys now. We've since loaded in stock from multiple other Mexican EMSs. So again, it's created a new model for us um where we can take stock from anywhere in the world. We can set up one of these third party logistics sites. It's DSV we currently work with. We can set it up in a week to two weeks. So, brand new stock. We, you know, we're out in Vietnam recently looking at a big batch of stock. We can move that into DSV site and have it up for sale within two weeks. So, it's pretty cool. We can ramp it up, we can ramp it down, we can move it country if we have to. Vietnam's got some interesting rules around tariffs and VAT at the moment and in retaliation to some of the things that Donald Trump's been up to. So it's very fast changing world. So you've got to be flexible. But Corning were really happy with what we did. We managed to reduce that stock significantly. They gave us a target. I think they needed two million pounds by Christmas. We managed to get them that sorry dollars. We managed to get them that and then they decided they wanted to sell it. So again, we're always happy to see this thing through to the end, whatever the end is for them, but it's client driven. This particular client wanted to just draw a line under it, move on, new financial year, write it off. Uh so we bought the balance for cash based on our original valuation. So we always value at the start and we can do any number of you know mixture of things: some cash, some consignment, some InPlant. We can mix and match to suit the client. So, yeah, Corning is one of the few, most of our clients, you know, we've got NDAs with all of our clients, but most won't even let us talk about them. You know, we're not allowed to mention them at all, but Corning's given us approval to discuss what happened there. 

JS: Okay. Oh, that makes total sense. Yeah, that's great. Great to hear. So there's a hot button topic that everyone's discussing right now and I'm sure you included is probably going to be. It's AI. Does AI play any major role in your company and the way it operates? 

KMG: It does now for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I've been droning on about AI for probably about four or five years and harassing my tech team. We've got our own in-house developers. So, these systems we've got InPlant and others are home built. So we've got a team of developers. AI has been in the news for a long time and yeah I've been keen to explore what's possible for a long time but the technology wasn't that user friendly until recently. So probably about a year ago we started to play around with the eye. We always did a lot of automation that's why we built systems. So we built our own internal systems so that we could automate the purchase order process sales order process the picking, packing. You know, our InPlant guys operate from an iPad. So, they're literally getting sent information. Hey, go and get this part, take a photo, send it to, you know, pop it into the iPad, and our sales people automatically get a message to say, “Hey, here's your photo”. And they'll ping it out to the customer. But we've gone way beyond that with our automation. A lot of people are calling automation AI, and it's not strictly true. So, we've been reluctant to shout about, hey, we're using AI because it's a bit like greenwashing. You know, people are jumping on the green bandwagon. And it's, you know, it's often not strictly true. You know, it's jumping on the bandwagon for the sake of it rather than truly believing in it. And AI is quite similar. We hear a lot of people talk about AI, but are they really using it? Our developers are working now extensively with AI. They're all using Claude currently for coding. We're able to produce customized solutions much, much faster. So, you know, the InPlant system was created for one particular huge EMS. Every time you take it to a new EMS, there's little tweaks need made. So, you have to alter it and amend it, and that can sometimes take time. With AI now, we're able to make those amendments and those customizations much, much faster. We actually had a whole team meeting. So we got all our staff to the UK just two weeks ago and we had what they call vibe coding sessions. So we broke the teams up not by department intentionally. We broke them up into mixed departmental people. I think we had about six groups aided by a tech. And the tech wasn't allowed to come up with any ideas. They were just to help us put our ideas into Claude. And it was amazing. We did it for an hour and every team created a fantastic web-based tool of their choosing in an hour. And you know, it would still need more refinement, but to get that concept physically working in an hour is just unbelievable. Seriously would have been months before to get to the stage we got to in just one hour. So super exciting and particularly for somebody that wants to customize solutions. 

JS: Definitely, I think the where some companies go wrong I feel is that instead of using it as a tool to streamline and improve their processes like you did they kind of replace the actual people in the company with it they think of it as all-in-one solution that you no longer need people to be involved and I feel like that's not the case. I feel like it's meant to assist your people. It's not meant to replace them. And that's where people are running into issues. 

KMG: We're having great fun with it. I mean, you know, we've got workers from 20 year old, in fact, 18 year old all the way up to 60 something and, you know, they're all getting involved with it now. you know, I mean I've been to AI seminars maybe a year or so ago you know physical and online and the expert in the room is basically using ChatGPT like Google and they're telling us that they're the oh this is amazing it's doing these great things for me but it's the kind of basic part of these tools. You know when you start coding with it and creating things it's incredible what it's achieve what's achievable and that that's what we wanted to do two weeks ago is literally have every single individual within the company seeing for themselves just how exciting AI can be and the enthusiasm was incredible the things we created were incredible I mean my group I didn't get overly involved but there was there's a girl in our team who loves to travel so she said I really need a tool that will find me the best holiday at the best price and you know tell me where even where I should go. So I say well okay that's interesting but for me I'm typically traveling and doing multi-sight visits. So I've got a trip to The States soon and I'm trying to visit about 20 different companies all across The States and Canada. I'm doing that mid June into July a little bit. And that's very complex much more complex. So I added some of that in. Right. Okay. Okay, so I've got all these stops. I've got to do it in the most efficient and eco-friendly fashion possible. How should I do that? So that added a lot of complexity to it. And then of course we wanted to look cool. So, you know, we needed the globe spinning and you know, zoom in on the area and but you know, literally we were able to do the vast majority of that in one hour. 

JS: Yeah, that was fantastic. 

KMG: Incredible. Really cool. Some of the other ideas were just as amazing. 

JS: That was great. So what would be your message to any electronics manufacturer listening right now? What should they take away from this conversation? 

KMG: I think I mean operational efficiency is something that everybody's involved and a lot of companies are still when it comes to circular economy. It's not their focus. You know, let's be honest, manufacturing companies, they've got to make a profit. They've got to manufacture goods. They have to ship things often by air. You know, there's no getting away from some of that stuff. But they typically all buy into operational efficiency and a circular economy is just one part of that efficiency. You know, it's it makes no sense to scrap or bury or crush perfectly good components. You know, why would you why would you do that? We make it so easy. We take all the labor, all the hassle out of it for you. Just give us access to the stock in whatever fashion you're comfortable and we'll make sure it gets to a good home and you get your money back. You know, there it's a no-brainer. So, for God's sake, stop ignoring it. You know, I still visit factories and they go, "Oh, it's only so much percent of turnover” but it's profit. It's cash at this point. You know, it's if it's 5% or 10% of your revenue, but you can turn that back into cash. That's massive. you're literally increasing your profit margin. So, stop ignoring it would be the key message. Stop putting it to the side. Companies from time to time have a little focus on it. The CFO sees the big number and he'll suddenly scream about it and folk will call us and they'll say, "Hey, I've got this excess problem. I want your help with." It's quite often somebody quite junior that gets dumped with the job. And they'll explore it a little bit. They might hit a couple of obstacles and then they'll the heat dies down. The CFO is off busy worrying about something else. So, it just gets shelved. The product the project gets shelved and that's frustrating for us when we were halfway there to solving the problem and it just it's not focused this month and it goes away. But it builds and it builds and it builds. That excess is just growing and at some point it's going to get dumped in some fashion or cost you money to get rid of. You know, eventually you have to pay to get rid of it. So, yeah, I always say act now. You know, the best time to plant a tree, if you can't do it 20, 30 years ago, now is the best time. And it's the same for this. Yeah, it's kind of stolen. It's not really mine, but it is a good analogy. 

JS: So if anyone wants to get in touch with you or learn more about your services, what's the best way to contact you or the company? 

KMG: Yeah, componentsense.com. There's a number of ways to get through. We've got a phone number on our website. Unlike many companies, we welcome phone calls. You can call us. You can set up a meeting from there. I'll maybe drop you some details as well so that you can share it with your with your listeners. 

JS: Great. 

KMG: Yeah, many ways to get hold of us. Google us, Google Component Sense, you'll find us or pop us into your favorite AI tool. 

JS: And for anyone who wants those links, I will be included in the YouTube description. So, just check below. Uh we'll have everything there that you need to get in touch. 

Kenny, thank you so much. This has been fascinating and really opened, I hope, some people's eyes to this whole world people don't even seem to think about. 

KMG: That's the plan. Yeah, I hope so. Thank you. 

JS: All right, everyone listening. Thank you so much for tuning in. Come back next time. We will have another guest.