| Table 1. Interview form displaying thematic groups, question ID, question content and category. ID’s display thematic groups and question level (letters for the thematic group, one digit numbers for questions, double-digit numbers for sub-questions). | |||
| Thematic group | ID | Question/Sub-question | Category |
| Company figures | A1 | Company establishment year | Numeric |
| A2 | Number of employees (SME classification; European Commission, 2017 ) | Categorical (<10, 10–49, 50–249, >249) | |
| A3 | Market size (number of countries) | Numeric | |
| A4 | Number of produced yarding equipment per year | Categorical (<10, 10–19, 20–50, >50) | |
| Customer experience | B1 | Has your company ever received requests from customers concerning cable yarding equipment for use in flat and/or wet terrain conditions? | Binary (yes, no) |
| B11 | If yes, from which country/countries? | Open | |
| B2 | Does your company offer cable yarding equipment that has been specifically adapted to flat and/or wet terrain conditions? | Binary (yes, no) | |
| B21 | If yes, what have these adaptions been? | Open | |
| B3 | Are you aware of customers that are using your equipment for cable yarding operations on flat and/or wet terrain? | Binary (yes, no) | |
| B31 | If yes, do you know what their primary motivations to use this system are (in order of perceived priority)? | Open | |
| Specific challenges and adaption potential | C1 | From your point of view, what are the specific challenges of cable yarding on flat and/or wet terrain concerning installation, with particular respect to anchors, intermediate supports, tail hold trees and clearance? | Open |
| C2 | From your point of view, what are the specific challenges of cable yarding on flat and/or wet terrain concerning operation, with particular respect to productivity and cost? | Open | |
| C3 | From your point of view, what are the specific challenges of cable yarding on flat and/or wet terrain concerning other areas? | Open | |
| C4 | Do you think cable yarding equipment could be specifically adapted to better suit for flat and/or wet terrain conditions? | Binary (yes, no) | |
| C41 | If yes, what would these adaptions be? | Open | |
| Future potential | D1 | Do you think that the demand for cable yarding operations on flat terrain will increase as a result of altered operation conditions (climate change and society’s environmental awareness)? | Binary (yes, no) |
| D2 | What do you think are the main hurdles to a further expansion of cable yarding in flat terrain? | Open | |
Fig. 1. Company country and number of companies per country in bracket (innermost circle; AT = Austria, IT = Italy, CH = Switzerland, SI = Slovenia, NO = Norway, CZ = Czech Republic), size (second circle from centre; according to SME classification of the European Commission (2017)), market size in terms of the number of countries sold to (third circle from the centre) and average annual number of produced pieces of cable yarding equipment (outermost circle). Wherever NA is stated, this type of information could either not be provided by the companies or they were not willing to share it.
Fig. 2. Origin of customer requests for flat terrain cable yarding technology by country (DE = Germany, RU = Russia, IT = Italy, AT = Austria, BY = Belarus, FR = France, BE = Belgium, CZ = Czech Republic, ES = Spain, FI = Finland, NO = Norway, PL = Poland, RO = Romania).
Fig. 3. Major groups of approaches to better adapt cable yarding to flat terrain and examples of mentioned adaptations.