General Manager of City Kia of Greater Orlando Raul Gomila had a problem that would make most dealers jealous: too much business.
Over the past couple of years, his dealership had grown from 2,000 cars per year to over 5,400, but he still only had 19 service bays to handle increasing volume in the service and parts department.
Driving the news: "We went from having dysfunctional size and capacity. People are waiting three weeks to get an oil change," Gomila told Daily Dealer Live hosts Sam D'Arc and Uli DeMartino.
So he built a 44,000 square foot facility with 30 additional bays.
The $2.7 million project ballooned to $5 million during the pandemic, but City Kia now operates 49 total service bays and handles 220 repair orders on peak days.
As a result: The expanded capacity allowed Gomila to completely rethink how service operations should work. Instead of cramming everything into one building, he created a specialized two-facility system.
The main dealership became the "quick loop" for routine maintenance and fast-moving parts, while the off-site facility handles major repairs, wholesale operations, and reconditioning.
Shuttles run parts between locations all day, and hours get extended to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.
Unexpectedly, the expanded facility came with massive warehouse space that transformed his parts business.
"We were doing, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand in wholesale [parts] a year back in the day. Today, we're averaging close to half a million in wholesale a month," he explained.
The details: The key was separating wholesale parts from retail operations entirely.
The off-site facility houses two distinct warehouses—one for wholesale parts, one for retail parts.
This prevents inventory conflicts while allowing deeper wholesale parts inventory.
The operation now ranks among the top wholesale parts volumes in the Southern region.
The edge: With service capacity and parts flowing, Gomila could implement reconditioning standards that would be way more difficult to execute at a smaller scale. Cars now move through the entire recon process in 72 hours maximum.
"We get cars from the moment they're checked in into service through detail and out. The worst case scenario is 72 hours," he said.
Gomila assigns dedicated technicians specifically for recon work and maintains uncompromising standards.
Between the lines: Managing all these moving pieces required serious investment in training, and Gomila had to ensure his team could handle the complexity.
"We're spending a lot of time training fixed ops, whether it's the communication between our service BDC employees and our team members there, our service advisors, our service writers, and our service lead managers," he explained.
So, he brought in Jennifer Suzuki to train advisors on best practices and added video technology so customers can see repairs through technician eyes.
Bottom line: Faced with a service department bursting at the seams, Gomila used the challenge as a chance to rethink fixed ops from the ground up.
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