Shrinking the kernel with intelligent config

Any reason the output of 'lshw' can't be twerked and combined with a file that lists 'hardware to be added' and 'features to be included' to provide input to a kernel configurator? You don't so much need to know how the hardware is laid out as you need to know which hardware is present. The configurator should then be able to enable just those bits of kit and features and dependencies....