It sounds like a retake/elaboration on the "Commonality and Variability Analysis" used in Domain Engineering and employed in "Family-Oriented Abstraction, Specification and Translation" (FAST) software engineering methodology.

Commonality and Variability in Software Engineering by James Coplien et al. pdf at - https://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/PDF/Commonality_Vari...