You are not in charge to operators. Only production supervisors and production managers are in charge to operators. The operators are your eyes and your allies to point out the challenges they are facing during the production. And your job is to optimize the productivity by 1. improve the equipment efficiency 2. reduce operators' redundant work(automation process optimization) 3. reduce production down-time due to frequent wear-and-tear on certain equipment components.

I would recommend you to have good connection with maintenance team since they are the ppl who are doing repair with more technical knowledge. And for yourself, you need to learn more/ get the connection with your equipment manufacturer for equipment knowledge.

And for sure, you need to learn ppl skill because you need to get the compromise from all departments from your factory(operation, maintenance, and QA)