Here is some evidence for the 1.8m being much earlier:
http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/11/09/despite-18-million-nintendo-wii-manufactured-monthly-there-will-be-wii-shortages-for-holiday-shoppers-says-nintendo-president-in-video-interview.htm
"Nintendo, the world’s largest maker of handheld game players, plans to keep monthly production at 1.8 million Wii consoles, after boosting the output during the three months ended June 30, 2007."
This supports what folks may remember which is that they said in November that they were keeping production at 1.8m, that is what spurred all the 1.8m articles in November. The press largely pays no attention during the rest of the year and the production information close to the holidays when everyone wants to know about Wii production obviously got a lot of coverage.
The two articles I've linked seem to indicate to me that some time during December '06 Nintendo decided to increase production and around late February was the first increase. Now, I provided a link above that says they hit around 1.5m production by the end of May and this new article indicates that they continued increasing production until they hit 1.8m at the end of June.
I have to admit I am skeptical that they had production at 1.8m in June as it really doesn't fit with what is observable. I think that the answer lies somewhere between the the timeline I mentioned above and what TWRoO listed originally. I'm going to take a crack at this and I think I will end up a lot closer to TWRoO than what those articles indicate:
| Cumalative | Monthly | Shipments | |
| Start | 2.00 | 2.00 | |
| Nov | 3.00 | 1.00 | |
| Dec | 4.00 | 1.00 | 3.19 |
| Jan | 5.00 | 1.00 | |
| Feb | 6.00 | 1.00 | |
| Mar | 7.10 | 1.10 | 5.84 |
| Apr | 8.35 | 1.25 | |
| May | 9.80 | 1.45 | |
| Jun | 11.30 | 1.50 | 9.27 |
| Jul | 12.80 | 1.50 | |
| Aug | 14.45 | 1.65 | |
| Sep | 16.25 | 1.80 | 13.17 |
| Oct | 18.05 | 1.80 | |
| Nov | 19.85 | 1.80 | |
| Dec | 21.65 | 1.80 | 20.13 |
| Jan | 23.45 | 1.80 | |
| Feb | 25.25 | 1.80 | |
| Mar | - | - | - |
First of all I want to say that the production numbers I'm using in each month are the result of what I speculate was the average production rate.
For Feb I think the increases came too late to have a real impact. Then over the course of March through May they increased to just shy of 1.5m like the report I linked above indicated, next they leveled off at 1.5m for June and July to assess the situation a bit due to their notoriously cautious nature. Finally realizing it was warranted they increased it over the course of August and reached the 1.8m rate by the end of August (which is why the month averages out to around 1.65m. I think the large increase over Aug was accomplished by preparing for it during June and July by getting their proverbial "Ducks in a row" so that if they decided to go ahead they could make the adjustment quickly.
We really don't disagree all that much on the final numbers just a bit about when it all happened which is completely fine since there is plenty of room for interpretation seeing as we don't have the exact numbers.
edit: ok just saw your two most recent posts....your latest table is stunningly close to what I have. We are off by like 250k which is within 1% of each other.
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