Solid lubricants are materials that, despite being in the solid phase, can reduce friction between two surfaces sliding against each other, without the need for a liquid lubricant. They are characterized by a layered structure, meaning that low tangential stresses can promote the sliding (low friction). However, this also means that they present low mechanical strength. To find a balance between wear and frictional behaviour, coatings obtained with the deposition of a high-strength material incorporating an element or compound able to provide the low friction were developed. During sliding contact, structural transformations and/or chemical reactions occurs, generate locally a tribolayer (tribological layer) with low friction properties. These are known as self-adaptive low friction coatings. Unfortunately, tribological test indicate that the formation of the tribolayer is very sensitive to the sliding contact conditions, contributing to inconsistent results in industrial applications. In this work, micro-scale analysis of rough contact surfaces sliding against a rigid flat surface is performed to improve the understanding about the presence of a tribolayer on the real contact area. The representative contact element is discretized using non-conforming hexahedral meshes and different rough topographies are defined based on Fast Fourier Transforms, which enables to describe their frequency content in an unbiased and scale-independent way. The yielding behaviour of the different zones of the contact surface is modelled considering information extracted from depth-sensing indentation tests, assuming the Swift hardening law. The local coefficient of friction is assumed to be pressure dependent to enhance its evolution throughout the real contact area. The results highlight the interplay between the different process variables on the real contact area and, accordingly, the global coefficient of friction.