Passion and Trash

When I was a kid my favorite day was garbage day....lawnmowers, electronics and games provided the raw test bed for experimentation and engineering disassembly. Best of all everything was free for the picking. Any kid with a wagon and initiative could become Thomas Edison reinventing and recreating, Forty years later I now make my living heading up a team that finds salvage gold in the massive pool of electronics that others have relegated to what we affectionately call core. Here at ERC we are at the most advanced point of the sword in an industry that prides itself on innovation and reverse engineering. We save the environment and help reduce repair budgets by giving new life to components that would otherwise fill the landfills. The men and women who work in our industry are a unique skill-set combination of Macgyver meets Henry Ford. Our assembly lines must constantly adapt to changing raw materials and repair and replace are regular functions at even the most minute component level.

We are positioned in a multi-billion dollar industry that gets paid handsomely to do the right thing. Back when I was dragging salvage back to my parents home and disassembling the junk treasure in my Mom and Dad's garage I had no way of knowing that it would lead to a lifelong pursuit of reinvention and renewal. The sad part is that although we are surrounded by world class Universities I have never heard of any of our awesome Michigan based Universities even express an interest in having those of us from this industry speak to future engineers. As raw material becomes more precious and the landfill option more costly isn't it time we devote more than just lip service to renewal and reuse? Passion and Trash is real and putting forth the effort to better design for remanufacturability should become a primary focus as we move forward as one of the leading industrialized nations.

Everyday I see components that were deemed "unremanufacturable" which tickles me because now that we figured out how to do it we stand alone minus any competetion!! Being the only lion at a watering hole is an awesome gig if you can land it!! So this is my gentle wake-up call to the University Of Michigan...please add remanufacturing to your curriculum so we can add engineers without having to train our own from scratch...give us a call we'd be more than glad to assist.PT