I just got dinged for my pre-order NeckerII's

They should be here in a few days. I ordered them last October

Among Busse-owners, they joke about "two weeks" lead-time meaning just about anything. From them, i got used to making the investment and waiting for the dividend/interest to surprise me (i.e. a knife nicer than what i paid for). So far never been disappointed in S!K products or their customer service. But they definitely could use more staff. i look forward to seeing what the company is doing in a couple of years when the move is complete and hiring has begun again. But yeah, not so good with forecasting
I wish more staff was as simple of an answer as it sounds. The problem is not simply more people. The people we do hire need to have a keen eye for detail. As most of you know, we are very particular about every knife. The practice around here is to 100% QC every time you have something in your hand. SURVIVE! employees also have to have a mechanical mindset and be skilled beyond just assembling parts. We have even had a hard time finding people who can assemble without marring the fasteners. Now consider those hair shaving edges, Guy is the only one here who sharpens to our standard and his efforts to train a grinding assistant have been futile so far. Most of our in house delays are because we have one person standing on concrete, hunched over all day, staring at things less than a foot away. That one person is often getting paid the least while being here the earliest and latest, 7 days a week.
From the time you place your order until it ships, that is on us and sometimes that takes longer than it should. That is why we have the box on the checkout page letting people know that when we have a lot of orders suddenly, it may take longer to fill each one.
As for production and things like the Necker II preorders, we go by experience and what our suppliers tell us. Guy is an optimist so yes, he is often wrong. But it is usually because of fluke instances that are beyond our control. What we
need is machines so that we have more accountability for the finishing of the knives. In recent months we've seen a lot of 2nds which could have been easily avoided if we had eyes on the blades sooner. Some of those have been, or are being, fixed here by hand but that adds to the delay. If we had less people around here in the past maybe we would have had those machines already, and been able to avoid some of the delays. But as it is, here we are, doing our best.