Sydney, I must be reading that wrong....ensure conformance to work instructions, in the absence of personal notes....can you rephrase that, because I don't know how I would ensure conformance to work instructions using personal notes.
How would I ensure that people are performing work in accordance to their work instructions/procedures? I think I stated that that is part of the supervisor's job. Assess that his crew is doing what they are supposed to do, how they are supposed to do it. Then there are the requirements to assess competency (and in some systems, qualification of workers) and last of all, internal audits should assess that the processes are being carried out per documented procedures/work instructons where needed.
I am not saying that every job needs a work instruction, and I have jobs that I do that I use some notes for (I have a set in front of me right now that shows me how to get some information out of our process control software that runds the entire plant.) But, if there is a work instruction out there, I would expect that that is the document that people work from, not handwritten notes. No, I don't play kwality kop. But if the managers here found someone doing a job the way they wanted to, and not the way it is described in the quality system, there would be some problems, and maybe even one of those infamous written verbal warnings that was talked about yesterday. It matters not how big, how many languages. If you have documented procedures/work instructions they must be available, and they must be presented in such a way that they are understandable to anyone doing the job and they need to be followed.
Don't give me "I don't know how many systems you've assessed". Just because I am not an auditor for a registrar, it doesn't mean that I cannot read the standard.

I am sure you didn't mean that to sound like it did. At least I hope you didn't. :mg: If your system doesn't work, your people don't have access, it isn't written so that all can understand, and the only way you can get stuff done is to supplement what you have with handwritten notes, your system is not implemented per the requirements. In the real world, hand written notes cause problems, as stated by others. If A crew does it differently than C crew because they've found out the instructions are not correct, you will be seeing nonconforming product, or worse, someone will end up getting hurt.