"This company has been on a good track and I want to go in and see if I need to change anything," said Glore, who was also named president of the Roy, Utah-based Iomega.

Glore said that James Sierk, the interim chief executive and president, had done "magnificent work" by making good on promises to cut inventory and internal costs. Glore and other company officials confirmed previously stated projections that the company would be profitable by its fourth quarter.

"I want to see if I can help accelerate those things," he said. Glore would not specify what actions he would take to move the company more quickly to its goals and declined to comment on current analysts' expectations of fourth-quarter earnings per share of 5 cents.

Iomega reported a third-quarter net loss of 6 cents, which includeda 3 cent per share charge related to the purchase of French disk maker Nomai SA.

Glore did say he was attracted to Iomega by its shift from selling its popular line of high density Zip and Jaz drives at retail to increasingly shipping its products as built-in components of personal computers.

"That is one of the things that intrigued me about Iomega," he said. "The closer you are to the manufacturer, the more you can reduce mean costs."

Glore acknowledged that while the shift has reduced profit margins, it promises to boost volumes. "My position as seen from the outside is that sales are going to increase," he said.

Iomega did see a jump in product shipments in the third quarter: The company said it shipped 2.4 million Zip drives, up 39 per cent over 1997, although revenues fell to $392 million from $432 million, due largely to the lower prices of the new products.

Before joining Iomega, Glore was president and chief operating officer for Rockwell Automation, the leading maker of industrialautomation products and the largest business unit of Rockwell International Corp.