You should be able to tell the pipeline to include extra directories like this:
config.assets.paths << Rails.root.join('vendor', 'assets', 'components')
You may also need to tell it to precompile specific files too, as only the main application.js & application.css are precompiled by default:
config.assets.precompile << %w( frontpage.css frontpage.js *.svg )
With Rails 4 on Heroku you need to add the 12factorapp gem
Finally, if you are using Heroku then for Rails 4 you'll need to add the following Gem
group :production do
gem 'rails_12factor'
end