Ameer Ali on Why NDC-12 Readiness Can't Wait

In the second installment of his interview with Pharmaceutical Commerce, Ameer Ali, senior director, manufacturer operations and data services at Cencora, addresses one of the more practical risks tied to the NDC-12 transition: what happens if a trading partner's systems simply aren't ready when the rule takes effect. Speaking ahead of his session at the HDA 2026 Traceability Seminar, "Readying Supply Chain Systems and Packaging to Transact NDC-12," Ali covers what manufacturers, wholesalers and packagers should be doing now across EDI, back-office systems, DSCSA processes and packaging lines to prepare. His session addresses preparation across those same fronts. In this installment, he explains why the law's built-in transition period is not the same thing as a buffer for being unprepared.

From Day One of the transition period, every downstream trading partner has to be ready to handle NDC-12, Ali says. Manufacturers won't all convert their product lines simultaneously, since existing inventory and packaging materials have to be depleted first, so the shift from NDC-10 to NDC-12 will unfold gradually across the industry. But that gradual rollout only works if receiving systems can handle either format the moment a manufacturer switches. If a trading partner's EDI system, master data, ERP order creation or warehouse scanners aren't updated, Ali warns, product can effectively stop moving, unreceivable on one end or unshippable on the other.

That risk is why Ali argues readiness has to happen years ahead of the effective date, not at the deadline itself, with real testing built in well before Day One. Waiting to find out whether systems work in production, he says, isn't an option the transition period is designed to accommodate.

Watch the first part of Ali’s interview with PC:

1. Cencora's Ameer Ali on Readying Systems for NDC-12