When developing new or optimizing existing products, tribological aspects are often handled subordinately. For the development engineer, an integrated overview with possibilities to describe and influence tribosystems would be desirable. For this reason, in the first part of this contribution, the essential elements of a tribological system are described in terms of classification schemes. In the second part, the application and the benefit of the classification schemes are demonstrated by deriving a tribological solution on the model level. Finally, using an exemplary model test setup, the solution is experimentally verified and discussed.