Edit: thank you all for the feedback. The different perspectives and insight really helped.
I'll be as brief as I can. I started with a new company several months ago. During the interview process, I was told it would be a supervisor role, but when they explained some of the roles they had in mind for my position, it was clear they were going to give me lots of Manager level duties/responsibilities to take care of as well. That is fine by me, I'm always up to for a challenge, and I was already doing most of those things in my supervisor role I was leaving. Also, I knew it would make it easier to get promoted to a Manager title much sooner. Put in the work, earn the reward (pending I did a good job of course).
I start the job, and the "training" consisted of...almost nothing. That is not an exaggeration. I've been in some less than ideal situations at work before with a lack of help. But in this case, there was zero plans/processes in effect for bringing ANYONE new on board, not just me. There was no training plan beyond "well when the guy that used to do his job has time, he can help." Which anyone that has any experience in a high paced manufacturing facility knows, is never. No one ever has any extra time.
Fast forward to now. I still have no clear understanding of what it is we really do here, or how we do it. I have reached out to several different people on many occasions asking for help. I have hundreds of sent emails (I've started saving them) asking for help on issues or projects, where I need the backstory/history of how a problem got from A to Z, that I never got any answers from. The vast majority of those were sent to the two people with the most direct knowledge of this position, and the products & processes it is responsible for. Being new, I don't have that backstory/history/knowledge of how these problems became what they are. Despite my many repeated attempts to reach out for help, far too many . A few of my reports have been amazing trying to help me out as much as they can, but their knowledge only goes so far, so their help is limited.
What do you do in this situation?
I know what I want to do, and will try to do. I know what I should do, and am going to do. But I also know that I'm still relatively young, and I don't have a lot of experience in these situations yet. I know there's a lot of great experience here to draw on and ask guidance from, and that could help paint a clearer picture of what I could and/or should do moving forward.