The aim of the document is to provide effective guidelines and recommendations for the effective design of the implementation process of Industry 4.0 in the furniture sector and to provide managers with effective guidance in this context. The primary data sources are semi-structured expert interviews and questionnaire surveys. Based on the structured interviews with executives of furniture companies in 2021 and 2022, the main drivers necessary for the implementation of Industry 4.0 in the furniture industry were identified both from the internal company environment perspective using a 7S analysis and from the technological perspective using Industry 4.0 building blocks applied to individual examples in the furniture industry. The respondents agree that the current state of the sector is generally at the Industry 2.0 level. They also recommend SMEs establish inter-company cooperation in production and development, which will enable the involvement of small and medium enterprises in buyer–supplier linkages. They further stress that the application of Industry 4.0 has led to rapid shifts in terms of: an increase in the operational efficiency in a range of 30–50%, a reduction in communication flow, errors and repetitive operations, and thus has directly contributed to the realisation of sustainable production.

Achieving public support and understanding in addressing the challenges of climate change and the bark beetle calamity is a prerequisite for the successful future of Czech forestry. The most important instrument for achieving public support is communication. To be effective, this communication has to be built on a communication strategy reflecting the long-term goals of forest policy and has to be based on both current analyses and other relevant information, which, in turn, is based on the research results of the public perception of the forests and forestry. This article deals with the results of current research studies and formulates conclusions in relation to this communication strategy. Among other things, these results indicate the willingness of a large part of the public to actively participate in voluntary assistance to forestry, markedly differing opinions among individual groups on forest functions, and rather below-average interest in information concerning forests and forestry.

Forests and human connection with nature have a major impact on human health. Through exercise and recreation in the forest, people receive many benefits from forest ecosystem services (FES) which have a positive impact on their physical and mental health. The paper tackles two main goals i) the first one is an overview of existing literature related to human health and well-being derived from forests in the countries of Central Europe published in the Scopus database. ii) The second goal was to create an overview of policy instruments related to forest cultural services (FCS) in the forest policy documents of selected Central European countries (CEC). A partial goal of the research is to identify gaps and to find a focus of future research in the field of human forest well-being and FES. The results showed that on the national level there is a lack of guidelines for culture services and their anchor in legislative documents. A challenge for the anchor of cultural services is to improve communication between different resort organizations and forest stakeholders. For future research is recommended to survey the forest impact on human health that would provide a base for creating a platform for policy tools related to FCS and help to set up recreation planning in European forests.

This article discusses the production potential (and limits) of the forests in the Czech Republic (CR). The calculation respects ecological limits set by typological system and the Czech forestry legislation. The key criterion of the production evaluation is the total mean increment. Usually, a forest owner can choose amongst several variants of management. The analysis in this work examines the two limit variants -the minimum and maximum production potential. The results show that, e.g., the Norway spruce share might be 19 to 48% of the total area of Czech forests (51.4% at present). The target management the owners opt for (Norway spruce, pine, oak, and beech) can, in the future, influence the timber processing industry, the main purchaser of timber raw material from Czech forests. The maximum variant shows 9,134 thousand m 3 of available coniferous round timber, while the minimum one only 3,802 thousand m 3 per year. Therefore, the timber processing industry should keep a close watch on the situation and either try to persuade forest owners to choose the alternative of the target management that would provide sufficient assortment for timber processing, or adjust the manufacture to the possible changes in the species composition of the forests.

At present, forest enterprises face many challenges in adopting innovative bio-based approaches considering global changes. Due to the specifics of forestry, the choice of financing sources is a complex issue. The aim of this study is to estimate the capital structure determinants of forest enterprises in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria in the context of the relationship between leverage and the factors of its appearance. The evaluation of capital structure determinants was carried out using selected indicators for 18 forest enterprises, with 6 enterprises per country. Data were processed for the period of 2015–2019. The study methodology was based on a Panel Data Analysis with Fixed Effects and Random Effect models and Ordinary Least Squares estimation. The following specific variables were included: liquidity, leverage, return on assets, size of the enterprises, and gross domestic product. The results revealed that the forest enterprises in these three countries can be differentiated by size and form individual functional relationships with the positive influence of enterprise size on liability share. The next significant determinant was found to be liquidity, which has a negative relationship with enterprise leverage. These results will be useful for managers of forest enterprises in decision-making processes to determine the amount of debt and planning investment programme strategies.