The emergence of the 4th Industrial Revolution has led to a significant transformation on work systems, requiring deep changes in logistics, manufacturing and operations management, which consequently impacts on the Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) area and its graduates. Toward this scenario, keeping up-to-date IEM study programmes is needed in order to satisfy the incoming demand for new knowledge resulting from these transformations. As a result, higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly seek to equip their students with key, relevant and up-to-date knowledge and skills needed to perform well in the 'new' labour market. In general, the existing frameworks describing the profile or intended learning outcomes for engineers' graduates are valid for any engineering speciality area (e.g. Tuning-AHELO, EUR-ACE, ABET-USA). There is indeed a lack of frameworks designed for specific areas, namely for IEM, establishing the body of knowledge and skills IEM graduates should acquire. This leads to differences in IEM study programmes offered at HEIs, which can cause some misunderstanding regarding what IEM is as a scientific discipline. The study presented in this paper follows from a previous one on "The industrial engineers' essential knowledge and transversal skills" [1], and has two main purposes. Firstly, to develop a framework for the IEM body of knowledge, able to serve as a reference to map IEM programmes. The IISE's "The Industrial Engineering body of knowledge" [2] was used as a point of departure for designing this framework. Secondly, to test and validate the proposed framework, by using it to compare and analyse the IEM programmes currently offered at Portuguese public HEIs. The paper provides a contribution to knowledge development around IEM by providing a validated common framework for mapping and comparing different IEM programmes around the world.